Louth Park Abbey

Louth Park Abbey was a Cistercian abbey in Lincolnshire, England. It was founded in 1139 by the Bishop Alexander of Lincoln as a daughter-house of Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire.

The founder originally offered the monks a site on the Isle of Haverholme, but they were unhappy with the agricultural potential, and it was given to the order of Gilbert of Sempringham, who settled there in 1139.Alexander of Lincoln then gave the Cistercians a site within his own park at Louth instead. The original abbey charter was transcribed into Priory Book of Alvingham and reads, in part:

Alexander, by the grace of God, bishop to all his successors sendeth greetings... I, by the counsaile of my clergie and assent of my whole chapter of the churche of Saynte Marie at Linkholne, am disposed to found an abbey of mookes of St, Marie, of the Fountaynes, accordinge to the order of the blessed St. Benedict and custoomes of (Cistercians) in my woode, namely, in my Parke on the south syde of my towne called Lowthe, which parke I have graunted wholie and free from all terrene service..."

The first monks to settle at the abbey site were headed by an Abbot Gervase.

The abbey was situated on an elevated area of ground, of around 23 acres, south of the River Lud. The river was used by the abbey to turn the wheel of the grain mill that had been given to them by Alexander of Lincoln 'to ever more to possess', but was too distant for general water needs, or to supply their fishponds. To solve this, the monks dug a ditch to bring water from the springs of Ashwell and St. Helen's at Louth to the abbey grounds. The ditch reached the abbey from the east and then divided into east and west channels around its edges, effectively forming a moat. The western channel circled around northwards and rejoined the main channel. To the east, the water was sent into two fishponds, one 'of great size', was still full of water, and stocked with fish, in the late 1800s. Now known as 'Monks' Dyke', although substantially altered, the main ditch from the Louth spings still survives today.

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